by Trevor Wyatt
The alien doesn’t know that Jeryl Montgomery is famous throughout the Armada for being a top-notch poker player. No one can out-bluff him. He could have made a career as a gambler, had he been so inclined. I’ve seen him bluff a table of crusty old poker players, including an admiral and a two-star general, into folding against a 2,000-credit pot when all he had was a queen in the hole. And this was against one player with a full boat. He’s good.
After nearly two minutes of silence, the blue one speaks again. Is it my imagination, or is he getting pissed off? “We send a standard hailing frequency to all ships and races we encounter—”and for a moment I don’t hear anything more. Jeryl’s tactics have worked again. He’s gotten a precious pearl of information out of the alien, a genuine game-changer: We now know that there are other intelligent races in the galaxy, and that more than one of them has developed the capability to travel in interstellar space.
And Jeryl himself has given nothing away.
I push my astonishment away and pay attention to what the alien is saying. He introduces himself as Command Legate Ghosal, of the Sonali race.
As unobtrusively as possible, I ask our computer for a definition of “legate,” because although I have heard the word, I don’t recall what it means. The computer comes back with, an ecclesiastic delegated by the pope as his representative.
A what, now? This alien is a religious official? Captaining a starship?
Unless there is something seriously wrong with the translation—a possibility I am willing to entertain—what we have just learned is that God is a concept not limited to the human race. But wait now, wait wait wait, I say to myself. Don’t get ahead of yourself here.
Religion is still practiced on Earth and among the Outer Colonies, but it lacks the prevalence it once had. It’s been reduced almost to the level of a hobbyist’s pursuit. Organized religion as such perished in the aftermath of World War III. Too many bad things happened to too many good people for the idea to sustain much belief among the survivors scrabbling to live in the ruins of cities across the globe. People who have been reduced to drinking filthy rainwater and catching rats and cockroaches for food haven’t got time to listen to sermons. Do unto others is a splendid idea when you have a warm place to sleep. But if you have no more than rags to wear and are either too cold or too hot or too sick to feed your children, the basic human drive for survival takes over. Rather than love thy neighbor, you are more inclined to clout him—or her—over the head and take the rat that they caught for dinner. The neighbor himself may end up as dinner.
It happened over and over after the war. The race came closer to extinction than it ever had before. Two-fifths of humanity died. Maybe more. God didn’t save anyone. Nor did Mohammed, or any of the others who’d been held in high esteem for so long.
Yet here we were confronted with Ghosal, an individual who was apparently the representative of a theocracy.
Talk about unexpected.
Ghosal continues speaking. “We were on a routine surveying mission,” he says, “when we picked up the signals from your ship, and came in for a closer look.”
Jeryl is as cool as a chilled wine glass. “So you have no knowledge of our fellows aboard their ship?”
“I regret to say that we do not,” says Ghosal. “This is a region of space that is only a few lightyears from the border of Sonali territory.”
“You say you were on a routine surveying mission,” Jeryl says.
“That is correct, Captain Montgomery. We noticed the wreckage of your Mariner and are saddened to hear of the loss of life of those aboard.”
“Thank you.”
“I would like to offer our help. We will help you search for whoever or whatever is responsible for the tragedy.”
“That is very kind of you, Command Legate Ghosal,” says Jeryl. “It is an unusual coincidence to find you here so near the Mariner.”
“I am not sure I understand what you mean.”
“If I may be perfectly frank with you, Command Legate, this is the first time an individual of our race has encountered another intelligent species. For us, this is an historical moment.”
“How pleased I am, then, to be able to share it. I am deeply honored.”
Oh you smooth SOB, I think. This is not the way I had ever imagined a First Contact would go. Ghosal talks more like a politician than a ship’s captain.
I see a telltale blinking on my console. Dr. Lannigan wants to talk to me.
“Yes?” I say quietly.
“There’s something not right here,” says the Science Officer. “Judging by what I see here, both our race and the Sonali seem to be more or less on an equal footing when it comes to technology. Their ship dwarfs ours, but if they are on a routine scouting mission...”
“Yes,” I say, getting the drift of his reasoning.
“I find it interesting that you have dispatched such a large vessel in a routine mission,” Jeryl is saying to Ghosal. Great minds, I think, smell the same rat.
“It seems like a big expenditure of resources.”
Interstellar travel is expensive; at least, it is for us. It’s one reason why our ships are relatively small, and why we recycle the hell out of everything. It’s why we have to pay for our own damn coffee. If the Sonali are indeed approximately as developed as we are, then this little “routine scouting mission” of theirs is costing them deep in the purse. You don’t send a ship as big as theirs is on a scouting mission. What they have there is a full-scale research vessel, and probably one that’s fully armed. In fact, I’d wager my left lower wisdom tooth that these guys are loaded for bear.
Something here is not right.
Ghosal isn’t taking Jeryl’s implication very well. “I am not sure I understand what you are saying, Captain Montgomery,” he says. The translation doesn’t put an edge to his voice, but I’d bet my other lower wisdom tooth that there’s on in his original clocks and pops.
“Oh, well, you know,” says Jeryl, being rather elaborately casual, “it’s simply that I wish my people could afford to build such an impressive vehicle simply for scouting purposes.”
“Captain,” says Ghosal, “I believe that the best course for you at this time would be take the information we have gathered form our study of your lost ships wreckage, and return to your home world with it.”
“Yes, I appreciate your position, Command Legate Ghosal, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. We’re sticking around here until we determine exactly what happened to our people.” His voice grows very hard. “And we mean to collect their remains, if at all possible. They have families and loved ones back on Earth who will want to know what happened. I will do my vest to tell them.”
There is silence from Ghosal’s end of the conversation. Then the alien says, “If I may suggest, you would do better to understand that this is Sonali space, and you are here only on our forbearance.”
“Thank you, Command Legate, I will take that under advisement.” And with that, Jeryl reaches out and taps his controls.
The communications link with Ghosal’s ship is severed.
“Well,” says Jeryl, sitting back and smiling at us. “That was an interesting little chat. What do you suppose they’ll do now?”
Chapter 14
Jeryl
Admiral Flynn isn’t so sanguine about the encounter when I report it to him, which I do shortly after I break the link between the Seeker and Command Legate Ghosal’s ship.
I make the call via slipstream in my office, because I have a feeling he isn’t going to approve of my actions. At first, he doesn’t.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Flynn says, smoothing back his hair with both hands. “Montgomery, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Yes,” I say, as calmly as I can. In the face of his outrage, I'm having second thoughts. Have I screwed up humanity’s first contact with an alien species? No, I won’t allow myself to think this. “I’ve faced down an authoritarian by adopting an even more authorita
rian stance.”
Flynn glances to one side as though appealing to an off-camera observer for help. “Listen, Captain... I know you have a reputation for thinking outside or above the parameters of a given problem. You were showing flashes of tactical brilliance as far back as your first year in the Academy.” He leans closer to the camera, which has the effect of bringing his face closer to mine. “But all the problems you faced in your schooling were hypotheticals... against human antagonists, whose responses you could rely on as being on a spectrum calibrated to human emotions. You could, in other words, use hunches and guesses to determine how an antagonist might respond.” He shakes his head. “You’ve tried to finesse your confrontation with Ghosal in human terms! You can’t be certain that he’ll react as a human being would react.”
“I was willing to take that risk,” I say.
This is not the right thing to say. Flynn slams his fist down on his console, and the picture wavers for an instant. “You took that risk on the part of your entire crew!”
Well, when he puts it like that... A commanding officer must take the welfare of his people into account. He cannot put them in harm’s way. It’s possible that I didn’t have that fact in the forefront of my mind when I cut of communication with Ghosal.
But when I look around at my CNC officers, I see no scowls or looks of fear. They glance at me with approval on their faces, and I take heart from that. They trust me.
“They trust me,” I say to Flynn, with confidence. He glowers at me, but then a grin breaks through.
“I know they do, son, I know they do.” Thank the stars, he is settling down. He’d never call me “son” if he wasn’t; Admiral Howard Flynn didn’t rise to his level of authority by being easy-going, but I have always had the ability to “read” him, and he me. We understand each other. He once told me, after a couple of drinks at some diplomatic get-together, that I remind him of himself when he was young. I took that both as a compliment, and as a confidence. I’ve never shared it with anyone.
Since then we have shared a... well, I hesitate to call it a bond, but I will go so far as to say that I believe we understand each other.
“Jeryl, I won’t sugar-coat it; your situation is being monitored at the highest levels.”
I nod. This is one time when I can’t make up my mind if I’m glad that we have instantaneous communications capability via slipstream, or whether I regret it. On the one hand, it’s good to know that someone has my back. If I miss a regularly scheduled report Flynn will be on the case immediately. But on the other hand, what I am dealing with is essentially a committee that wants to second-guess me.
Flynn knows this, and he also knows that it’s in his interest to let me have full discretion. I know he is shielding me from a dozen officials who outrank me, and even him. Those of us in the field must be allowed to make command decisions on the fly without interference from above.
“Let me ask you this, Captain,” Flynn says. “Do you have any assessment of their military capabilities?”
I have to shake my head. “All I know is what I see, sir,” I reply. “It’s a big ship—bigger than anything we have. It could be fully automated, I suppose; even this Ghosal could be a hologram or a synth puppet run by their vessel’s AI. But what would be the point of that? Why would they bother? No, I think he’s got himself a flying city, more or less.”
Flynn digests this. “To what end?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s as he claims; they’re a research vessel. There’s no guarantee that an alien race would use small scout ships and research vessels like we do. But I think there’s something else going on.”
Bluntly, he asks, “Do you think they destroyed the Mariner?”
Now it’s my turn to digest his words. “I... don’t think I do.”
“Mmm. Why not?”
“Because, if he’s telling the truth about being in contact with other alien races, they will have learned by now that appearances can fool you. Sure, he’d be careful approaching the Mariner even though it’s like an elephant approaching a flea. But even if he sent off that puzzle transmission of his, he wouldn’t fire on them simply because they didn’t respond. He’s got to have enough experience to have tried something else.”
Flynn nods slowly. “Yes, that makes sense... to our way of thinking. But as you pointed out there’s no reason to suppose that they think like we do.”
“I believe they do, more or less,” I say. “Ghosal has an attitude, but I understand that. He seems pretty human to me in terms of his emotional colors. We solved his puzzles. He’s no fool. Arrogant, yes, but no fool. His ship can swat us out of space, but at this point I am not liking him for the culprit.”
The Admiral draws a deep breath but simply nods at me.
“That said, sir,” I say, what do you want me to do?”
“The main thing is to make sure this blue-faced so-and-so either is, or is not responsible for what happened to the Mariner. If not, we’re good, and history proceeds. If he did it, well, we’re in a pretty pile, and I don’t mind saying so. It’ll be a mess, son, a big steaming mess.”
“I know.”
“Very well,” says Flynn. “Stay safe, but don’t back down.” He smiles. “I suppose I don’t really need to say that to you, do I?”
I smile back. “No sir, you do not.”
“I thought not. Flynn out.” And he cuts the slipstream link.
After he does, I sit looking around my office. It’s comfortable, but not what anyone would call luxurious. I have an art screen that’s usually tuned to Impressionist painters, my bunk, a closet, and a desk with a chair, which is where I'm sitting, looking at the blank slipstream monitor.
I don’t want to go into CNC right now, but I don’t want to be alone, either. I put in a call to Ashley. “Lieutenant,” I say, “I want to see you.”
“Sir,” she replies crisply. Within one minute my door announces her arrival.
Upon entry, she says, “You were talking to Flynn.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“You have that look on your face, that ‘I just had a chat with my boss’ look.”
“Hmph. I didn’t know I had one of those.”
“Well, you do. What did he say?”
I give her a précis of the conversation. She listens, nodding. “He’s being pretty reasonable,” she says.
“Yeah, considering that he could fry my ass if he wanted.”
She scoffs. “I don’t think he would ever do that, even if you screwed up royally. Which you are not about to do.”
“Not deliberately, anyway.”
She turns serious. “That encounter with Ghosal or whatever his name is... what do you think he’ll do?”
“I really don’t know. I think, I hope, that he’ll reply as an equal, and not send a torpedo into our guts.”
“Can we deflect one if he does?”
“No idea.”
“An action like that would make the Sonali into the biggest and nastiest bad guys we’ve ever met,” she says. “I mean Mankind, not us.”
“That’s completely correct.”
She emits a small chuckle. “I suppose there’s one good thing to be said about it.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Humans won’t be hating AIs anymore. We’ll all be on the same side. Every xenophobe in the Union will have a new target.”
“Yeah, no, that’s some cold comfort, there, Ashley.”
She smiles ruefully at me. “It’s all I have for you right now, Jeryl,” she says.
At that moment my screen lights up and I see Mary Taylor's face. She looks frightened. “There’s a new transmission from the alien,” she says.
“We’ll be right there,” I tell her. Ashley and I head out the door on the double.
Chapter 15
Jeryl
When Ashley and I enter CNC I immediately sense the tension. I go straight to Mary's station. Her face is damp with perspiration. I lay what I hope is a calming hand on her sh
oulder. “What’s going on, Lieutenant?”
“We’re being hailed by the Sonali craft,” she says.
“I’ll take it at my station,” I tell her. “Put it on the main screen as well.”
The grim blue visage of command Legate Ghosal swims into view on the small viewer before me, while giving the air around the big screen at the front of the chamber a sickly beryl tinge.
Without preamble, Ghosal says, “I have been in touch with my superiors.”
A thought clicks into place at the back of my mind. Ghosal has inadvertently revealed that he, like us, has the capability to communicate FTL. This fellow isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.
Ghosal clicks and pops at us. “Captain Montgomery,” he says in translation. “You were given clear instructions to leave this place. Why, then, are you still here?”
Against my will, my mind flashes back once more to one of Professor Guss’s lectures.
* * *
“Let’s look at some hypothetical situations,” Professor Guss said, pacing back and forth at the front of the room. The hall had stadium seating, so it was easy to see him. Plus, less than a quarter of the seats were filled. The class was an elective, and it was obvious that most students didn’t consider it to be worth their while. But Professor Guss never seemed to mind.
“You’ve landed on a planet that you know has intelligent life. You have seen cities from orbit, and individual structures. But these people are pre-spaceflight. They’ve lofted no satellites, and haven’t visited any of the other worlds in their star system. With all the best intentions, you set down on their planet in some out-of-the-way spot near one of their urban centers so that you can observe them before deciding whether to contact them or not.”
Alyce Teodosio’s hand shot up. She was in my class, a small intense Latin woman who rarely smiled. “We shouldn’t contact them at all,” she said. “Ideally, we wouldn’t interfere with the course of their natural advancement.”
He pointed at her. “And there are studies that back you up, Miss Teodosio,” he said. “They claim that any contact with a pre-spaceflight people could result in a deleterious effect on their confidence in their own efforts. They could stop trying, in other words.”
